It's not all roses!

When recapping or sharing highlights of a trip, it’s easy to simply show photos of great places, everyone smiling, all happiness and life. It’s great to do this, as there is ultimate enjoyment in seeing new places, experiencing new things, spending time together.

It’s also good to recap at times on when things haven’t gone to plan, either because they can be real learning experiences or they simply make a good story.

So, we have been on the road for a month, here is a recap on the difficulties and challenges that we have faced. Nothing too serious, but these have made life all the more interesting.

1. Children- yes, we have taken two, and it’s not all smooth sailing. Just like us, they get into moods, get tired, and get hungry. Boy do they get hungry! We have worked out that this is a BIG trigger for unhappy little Jack and Jo, so we endeavor to have healthy snacks at the ready, and plan meal times carefully. On top of this, Jack had a really tough start to the trip, with his ear infection flaring up again, with the associated severe fever, then having an allergic reaction to ‘something’, causing a rash and really bad cough.  Josie now is suffering through a cough as well. You get a tired, hungry and sick four year old, and life is not good. 
2. Camping grounds- Caravan parks give you a nice shower, some even have pretty impressive ‘Camp Kitchens’. They also have other campers, and sometimes lots of them, and sometimes lots of campers who like to be noisy (See the Sleeping bag theory post for further details.) So we have been woken up to drunken arguments at 2am, suffered through listening to talk about cars until 1 am and 50 style American car conventions putting on “Cry Baby” (nothing against the movie) at 9pm in an outdoor theatre setting with the corresponding sound. How Jack and Jo have remained asleep is beyond me. National Parks don’t have showers. The plus is the only thing that will wake you up is the chorus of birds at first light.
3. Stuff Ups- Ok, so I bought some lockable surfboard tie downs before we left, and then lost both the keys to the tie downs, with the surfboard strapped in on the top of the trailer. After seeing a locksmith who said he couldn’t make new keys for that type of lock, then borrowing a pair of bolt cutters from the manager of a caravan park in an unsuccessful bid to cut the straps (see ‘Insurance’ post), I then spent about 2 hours taking off the racks from the trailer, which allowed me to slip the boards and the straps off. A pair of lockable straps that work brilliantly, but are of no use to us now.
4. Tent poles- They break. One of our poles broke. Gaffer didn’t work (go figure!). Then I tried this steel cement stuff I found at a hardware store, the type you use to fill in a part of your car engine if it breaks off. Well, that’s what the sale assistant said. Surely that will work for a tent pole! It doesn’t. It does however, make a real mess of said pole, and cause them to be completely unusable.
5. Not so much a difficulty, or challenge, but a cool story perhaps (?) For anyone a little squeamish, read no more... Ok- While we were at Streaky bay, Em thought she heard something scurrying around the tent. We found nothing that night, however, the next morning when I was rolling up the tent to leave, we found a squashed and very dead mouse. It must have got under the tent and somehow got stuck and then one of us may have trodden on it unintentionally. So, bit yuck but there you go. Over a week and a half later, we are putting up the tent and Em has one of the larger tent pole. These have about a 4 cm diameter. As she picks it up she notices something that looks ‘tail like’ hanging out the end. “What’s this, what’s this?” She cries. Well, it turns out it was more than likely mouse number 1s mate, who had somehow managed to crawl into the pole (who knows why) and got itself stuck. I pulled it out and it was still just alive, but very much dying and looking like it hadn’t eaten in almost two weeks. It stumbled about 30 cm and then died. 

    

    That DEFINITELY wasn’t smelling of roses!